Movement No 23–The Sea and Pertaining Thereto

<p>Marin employed colored pencil differently in this sheet than he had in previous works, adding watercolor pigment subtly and tentatively and leaving thin gray lines that he neither reinforced nor repeated. While he used underdrawing to outline solid objects, he drew over the washes in order to indicate intangible pictorial elements such as the direction of the waves; the fine lines add touches of precision to the fluid, wet-into-wet paint effects that predominate.</p>

Catalogue

Year
1927
Dimensions
Primary support: 35.2 × 45.7 cm (13 7/8 × 18 in.); Secondary support, including decorative collar: 37.5 × 47.5 cm (14 13/16 × 18 3/4 in.); Tertiary support: 44 × 53.7 cm (17 3/8 × 21 3/16 in.)

Artist

John Marin
John Marin

Painting

John Marin was an American modernist painter and printmaker known for his dynamic watercolors and etchings of coastal landscapes, particularly Maine. Working primarily in watercolor from the 1910s onward, he developed a fractured, energetic visual language that synthesized Cubist fragmentation with direct observation of nature. His gestural brushwork and bold use of paper's white ground anticipated Abstract Expressionism while maintaining a strong sense of place and atmospheric condition. Marin spent decades based in Maine, where the rocky coastlines and maritime environment became the primary subject of his mature work.

New York City

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Approaching Fog

Approaching Fog

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WW-1952-135608
Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue Gray Sea

Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue Gray Sea

1947 · Oil on canvas

WW-1947-049935
Brooklyn Bridge - on the Bridge, No. 2

Brooklyn Bridge - on the Bridge, No. 2

1944 · Etching

WW-1944-M058361
Cape Split, Maine

Cape Split, Maine

1941 · Watercolor with touches of blotting, and with graphite and black colored pencil, on lightweight (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (top, left and right edges trimmed), laid down on artists’ board faced with ivory wove paper, in original frame

WW-1941-131259
Circus Elephants

Circus Elephants

1941 · Watercolor with scraping and wiping, and with opaque watercolor, graphite and black crayon, on medium-weight, slightly textured, cream laid paper

WW-1941-070077
Movement: Sky and Grey Sea

Movement: Sky and Grey Sea

1941 · Watercolor, charcoal, and pencil on paper

WW-1941-M031758